


A Took

by Lindra



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindra/pseuds/Lindra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt on hobbitkink. Bilbo goes to sleep at Rivendell after Frodo returns from Mount Doom and wakes up on the day of the Company arriving at his door. What does he change? Remember, forewarned is forearmed, and no Hobbit is armed quite like a Took.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bilbo wakes, and upon seeing Primula's roses running wild in the light of the window, he thinks to himself, as he always does: _why doesn't she ask the Gaffer? Honestly._

Then he is awake, and he does not need to groan to sit up, nor pant in anticipation of getting to his feet; in fact he is nimble once again, and his fingers reach for a stick, crafted and carved, that now perhaps never shall be made, and all his careful breaths to avoid rib-shattering coughs help nothing.

For there is nothing to help, and he recognises that wilted rose. It is one of the first and last to ever appear on Primula's fence -- for though she is untidy, she is meticulous, and it appeared only the morning of the Company barging into his past at Bag End.

This is not Rivendell, and the books he reaches for to confirm whether it is a dream, the properties of such portents, are not there.

The chair feels quite real, and he rubs the knot beneath his smooth fingertips and breathes. It is a fine pleasure, breathing unhindered, and he does much of it while he thinks quietly and softly and above all quickly.

After elevenses, if he remembers right, Gandalf will appear, and Bilbo will be -- would have been -- smoking his pipe, and very rude, and truthfully Bilbo often wished, in Rivendell, that he had been ruder, if only to spare Frodo the ruinous fate Bilbo brought him.

The song of its lure, though there is no ring in his pockets nor anywhere, runs always in his mind now. He does not listen and it cares not whether he does, and he does not care whether it dislikes his disobedience. Bilbo learned disobedience at a very early age, only to then pretend to unlearn it and perhaps keep it at bay for a time only for the adventure to turn his sensibilities upside down and shake out a proper Took.

The ring must be with Gollum still, or Smeagol as Frodo called it the once they discussed it, and Erebor is yet The Lonely Mountain without a kingdom, and the sons of Durin live.

If this dream is true, the sons of Durin live.

Bilbo considers his options most carefully and nods to himself. Whether a dream or not, the chance to correct his mistakes is welcome. If it is a dream, he shall have a pleasant awakening, and if not -- if not -- if not, then.

He is not one to say what is impossible and what is not. There is a Ring whispering to him, and that alone reassures him that he is not mad. The madnesses come only when it stops, in the transfer from hand to hand, the fear of losing it overriding its presence in his palm and making him think he had dropped it. He does not have the Ring at present to either lose or give away, and so it shall not stop.

Bilbo is reassured by this and the small set of books he did think he kept at this time. Not so very many, but enough for all that, and he reads about elves over breakfast, about the languages he thankfully still remembers, and does quick exercises in his halls away from the windows, walking briskly and stretching and practicing with his very best and longest meat-knife.

A Took once summoned does not go so easily into its hole, and Tooks are by nature cunning and crafty and rather bold.

Long ago Gandalf sought a son of Belladonna Took, and so a Took he shall get.

More fool he.

Bilbo will not lose anyone again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Company arrives and all is not well.

"Good morning," Bilbo says to Gandalf around the pipe he much missed in Rivendell, feeling somewhere between irritated and fond. The wizard is wise and always crafty, and though he is grateful that he helped Frodo, if he did not help Frodo in the end Bilbo would have found him and soundly boxed his ears. He is still very much inclined to do such a thing, the moreso for Gandalf's response.

So arrogant, so familiar, so dear his heart keens the song of Sauron at the sound of his voice. He does smile at the strangeness of seeing him this way again. Grey is Gandalf, a colour of wanderers and shadowy rogues and liars, and suits him far better than the White. Gandalf the White was strange and serene and uncommonly fierce and very little like his weed-smoking, pipe-laughing friend. He remembers how he came to forgive him for the door business. Bilbo does not think he will be inclined to such forgiveness again, for his heart is long hard as a pony's bit.

"I am Gandalf and Gandalf is me," Gandalf says, patronising as ever, as though there is a very great joke Bilbo cannot ever hope to grasp, and Bilbo supposes there would have been, if Bilbo had not been able to read and did not have quite a lot of time on his hands in Rivendell to follow the mentions of a mysterious grey wizard and find his movements laid upon all the maps of Middle Earth like the finest and most intricate spiderwebs. Gandalf is a very busy wizard and a very fine one in the end, but Bilbo suspects he never did contemplate overmuch the fact that Hobbits can read quite well.

"I remember you," Bilbo says. "You did the wiz poppers at midsummer." He glances about. "It's not midsummer."

"No." The laughing light subsides. "As I said, I'm looking for someone to share an adventure."

Bilbo gestures with his pipe. It's rather fun to needle him. Eccentric maker of wiz-poppers, indeed. "And as I said, perhaps west of Bree. Those riverfolk, you know. Good morning."

He rises, and for a moment he thinks he he has overplayed his hand and turns to confess -- but Gandalf invokes his mother's name, and he hardens once again to his wizardly amusement.

"It shall be very good for you and most amusing for me," Gandalf says. "I shall inform the others."

"What others?"

Gandalf chuckles. "Not to worry, dear fellow."

Bilbo empties pipe ash onto his shoes quite by accident. "Good morning."

He waits until the wizard has left before he descends to the cellars and does his exercises once again. That business finished he ascends to the market with a hand-carriage and a good pocketful of gold and returns with a cart overflowing with all sorts of things he'd wished for the first time -- hard cheeses and the makings of road-biscuits, ropes and proper sturdy thread, cloak-fabric and strips of leather cured into the most serviceable thongs useful for all sorts of things.

Bilbo spends the afternoon in the kitchen, cooking and cooking and cooking for the journey ahead. The dwarves will need to make do with a less exuberant feast tonight.

He is thinking rather beyond the feast and into the stretch of hunger after the trolls made off with most of the ponies carrying their eating things, an experience he does not care to repeat and is quite determined not to again if there is choice in the matter. Though Fate might have it that he is meant to bear the Ring until Frodo's coming of age, poor sweet dear Frodo, Bilbo has it that if he must be such a fell precedent to those dark times, he will do so comfortably fed. 

In due time all his clothes are mended and more fit for travel, between-leg seams snipped and smoothed and shoulders padded to easier bear his pack. Too he thinks ahead when he lets down the hems of his shirts and trousers only to raise them with tiny heirlooms and tucked-away pearls off his great-great-aunt's marriage strings. Such possessions handed from child to child's child are the wealth of Bag End. 

Between shirts he speaks to the Gaffer about the place's upkeep and so forth despite the mutterings about his Tookishness, and to Primula, whose hole has quite a fine gathering-place for a company of brave ponies, and he pays her well in his mother's takings from foreign lands to make sure their fittings are better-oiled than before. They agree that she will display a sign and give direction if he is the one to make it, for his writing is better than hers.

This time he eats early and slowly for it will be his last meal at Bag End for quite some time and he dislikes the thought of Dwalin snatching it again. The sign hangs bright, lit beneath a little lamp Primula rigged, the wilted rose long gone for the day.

Thinking of Dwalin brings him like as not, and Bilbo answers the door with a quick trepidation he did not expect. It is Dwalin old and bitter that is freshest in his mind, and this smooth-scalped Dwalin who bows and never lowers his eyes to anyone be they hobbit or King is a very strange creature to Bilbo. After Dain took King Under the Mountain Dwalin rarely raised his eyes to anyone. Least of all Bilbo, the hobbit who betrayed his dearest.

It is a relief only to see vague disdain rather than hate. Bilbo is not sure he cares for making more of a friend of him this time; it may be that he must steal the Arkenstone again and he prefers the thought of Dwalin's hate being only in the name of the dead, not also the living.

"Dwalin, at your service."

How many times has he heard that phrase?

Far too few. 

Fate will have it that he will hear it so often he shall tire of it, or Bilbo is not a hobbit.

"I am at yours. Come in and have supper," he answers, and gives him the biscuits and tomato stewings first this time with a tankard of ale to wash it down. He will not waste the hour with silent resentment this time, and settles with broadcloth and begins to embroider.

Should they need a shroud fit for a King, or a King-to-be, or a King-who-was, Bilbo determines they shall have one fine enough, and only one at that.

He allows the tears to brim and drain from his eyes unshed like the useless things they are. To be sorry, this he knows well. To regret, this too he knows well. But he will not mourn what will not come to pass.

"Very good," Dwalin says. "Is there more?"

"In the blue pot," Bilbo answers, not looking up from his task. Dwalin shall not lower his eyes again, that much is certain in his mind, and Bilbo will not give himself any more cricks in his neck either.

Dwalin rises, the sound of his steps very studied. "You were expecting us."

"Gandalf gave me a little warning." He bites thread, finishes it off tucked into a cluster of stitches, and strings his needle again. "I do hope it's enough, certainly. Er, how many did you say were coming?"

"I didn't." He sits.

"Ah. Well."

Being convincingly naive is difficult. He rather wants to slap himself, and say unkind things, and do strange things at the thought of how he once was. He envies that little Bilbo as much as he loathes him -- fool, fool, _fool_! Fool of a Took, running off like that. A fool for caring, and Bilbo is only a greater fool, for however foreign he found his own face in the still mirror-waters of Rivendell, how utterly strange his own hands are to him now, he still cares.

The door, and Bilbo sets aside the cloth and rises knowing what he will see through the window by the porchlight, knowing it will startle his heart and call upon the drowning of no song and no shadow filling his stretched spaces. Balin. Dearest, kindest Balin.

"At your service," says the dwarf, and his heart swells.

Bilbo had loved Balin deeply in a shy fatherless way, and grieved when he heard the news from Moria. He feels it again now, grief and joy both, and rubs his hands together with a peculiarly jolly smile that feels as though it is happening to someone else's face. "Good evening!"

"Yes, it is." Balin nods, very stately. "Though I think it might rain. Am I late?"

"It won't, and no, you're early. Dwalin's here too, actually." Bilbo backs out of the way, and watching Balin and Dwalin reunite makes the pull on his face feel bigger and stranger.

It is likely they and all of the Company are only coming together just now after being separated for years and leagues, and very likely that Bilbo is witnessing their first reunion since the retaking of Moria. It is rather humbling to see their understated delight in one another/

This time Bilbo lets them laugh together, and sits again with cloth and needle and continues the first of fourteen squares, and listens to Dwalin's concern over his elder, Balin's chuckling trust. Dwalin only offered Balin that which he'd already tasted, Bilbo realises now that he does that same again, and it reminds him of his tiny cousins caring for one another. 

Fortunately the blue pot is big around as a Man's chest, or the leap of Bilbo's anxious heart when the doorbell sounds again.

It's a cavalcade of pain to see them so youthful and fair, and he has an urge, much like he did when he saw Frodo again, to pull them to his chest and tell himself they are brave, strong boys who will be just fine but a extra squeeze never hurt anyone.

"Baggins, and you've the right hole," Bilbo tells them when their expressions slip to anxiety for his lack of response, Kili's worry particularly heartrending. He wonders how long it's been since Kili has seen his uncle. "Not that I know what you're all doing here," he mutters.

The slop of Fili's weapons into his arms is a comfort. These scabbards, these swords. Bilbo cleaned them after their deaths, scrubbed and sharpened the blades and set them with their shrouds of rotting fur and burlap and inadequate flimsy gold on their brows as though a clean sword was of any use to dead children.

They are so very young, as young as they were when they died, and Bilbo presses them harder against his chest, letting the blunt fastenings press into his flesh and ground him in his roaring detachment, his joy muted like pinching a drowning wick. Some is left on his hands, transferred from heart to sword as he lays them down, but for the main there is only weariness.

They are moving the table and chattering among themselves, and Bilbo studies the scabbards, use-dark and slung into blondewood chests emptied of letters and put open in the hall.

They look very right, and very wrong, and Bilbo is not quite sure which he should prefer. Memory is an odd thing; he does not remember Bofur not arriving on his own, but he falls in with the rest, and he remembers the cheeses, but not the corrugation of the rug from the table being dragged.

He wants to say to them, these dwarves, merrymaking and prideful: _take it, take everything, you have had it all_. They do. They eat of his food and of his wine and ale and beer, they eat and drink and laugh and make acquaintance and forge friends anew, they demolish his pantry and his bathroom and his life, and they do. They take it all.

"Bebother and confusticate these dwarves," he says in the empty pantry, the extras hidden in boring corners of his cellars. "I don't want to get used to them," he declares in his front hall, "I don't understand why they're in my house!" he cries, and it is really very satisfying to needle Gandalf, to poke and prod with the loud outrage of the host who has just had no less than thirteen guests be very rude and foul-smelling besides and knows precisely who to hold responsible.

Bilbo provokes them into singing about the things Bilbo Baggins hates just to hear their voices again, for if they are to take this, so shall he keep something in return, and never mind that they are returned to the table piled high in clean stacks -- it is that they sing, their voices together and bright with faith in a king soon conquered by pride, and that has not happened in a very, very long time.

This time he is the one who answers the door, not Gandalf, and he looks upon the face of the friend he adored and betrayed and strove so hard to protect only to be told he bore good in him as this last son of Durin lay dying in the ashes of tasteless victory, and feels very little at all, only recognition, and perhaps a pain of the familiar like too-bright lights at the sight of his face in profile. A kingly face. A dead face.

He is quite suddenly very angry at the fool who summoned retired warriors and toymakers and children (Fili and Kili and Ori are so blessedly, damnably young, they are babies to him) and those who knew absolutely nothing of Erebor other than dragons and stories into this ... this quest, only to hurt them, to abandon them for his vengeance against Azog, only to have their nephews die protecting him for his greed of a city they'd never seen.

Both he and the half-imagined, half-ingrained voice of the Ring murmur in his mind that he could do better. Much, much better.

But Bilbo is not the ring, and his clean rage for the hurt of people he had come to call friends is not the ring's unclean sulk at being denied yet another path to influence, and so he does nothing but step back and invite in this foolish young prince whom he wishes so badly to box about the ears. It is a red day, a sad day, when he and the ring agree with the same flavour of pain in both his mouth and mind. They haven't, not quite. Not yet.

"Gandalf," Thorin says, glancing between them. "I thought you said this would be easy to find."

Bilbo knows he lies; he saw the waiting glint of his beads. Knowing that he waited for the moment of joy to end instead of cutting it short is about all that speaks well of him to Bilbo at the moment, but it speaks well enough that Bilbo manages to pretend horror at the damage done to his door, and be confused instead of insulted or worse laughing when Thorin circles him with questions of skill and battle and dismisses him.

He has so many questions for Thorin Oakenshield. _Why would any but a fool come to you when they remember the terror of Moria, and that only an army of Orcs? Why would any come to you when you think of your kingdom with the same clinging, longing lust Thror felt for his towers of gold?_

And: _You wear your grandfather's Ring. How do you not know whence comes the madness of the line of Durin?_

But Bilbo is-was-will-be a fellow Ringbearer as well as a stranger, and a hypocrite besides for he has no intention of giving up his Ring either, and all three compel him to hold his tongue and bid welcome though the visions of what he might change, what he might finally protect for true and not in weeping daydream, threaten to crumble like charcoal in the face of Thorin's gleaming clawing need for Erebor at all costs.

He remembers the feel of the Arkenstone in his hand and he remembers the dying words of a king and firms his resolve once again. Perhaps there is hope for Thorin and Fili and Kili in their turn. 

No, there must be, or this is not a dream but a nightmare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo decides to out-Gandalf Gandalf. Oh, dear.

Leaving is a simple affair. Everything of his is packed, and Bilbo takes only an hour of quiet comtemplation with Gandalf looking on, just long enough for the tale of a Took inventing golf, before he signs the contract. It's a very good contract as contracts go, practical and covering many eventualities, and he feels in himself a great fondness for dwarves. Hobbits write of families, Elves of seasons, Men of emotions, and Dwarves of possibilities, all pinning their lives to their chosen conceits.

Gandalf, or perhaps Frodo, told him of Ori's final words, scribed as they were. 'They are coming. We cannot get out.' Such words, forsaking all rescue and hope and choice, are strikingly unusual. To write them at all needs a twisting of the runes, a use-name where a common name should be, and a certain rare diacrit to eliminate all alternatives. Where Elves say 'yes and no', Men say 'perhaps', and Hobbits begin with 'your grandmother', and Dwarves question 'what if?'

The entire contract, the Company, is based on Thorin's assumption as the son and grandson of kings that he has a right to chance. Whether or not Bilbo disagrees -- of late he has wavered on the subject of kingly rights, and well he ought given Aragorn's resistance and later coronation -- it is a fair assumption if one is a dwarf.

But Bilbo is a hobbit, and when he signs the contract beneath _Thorin son of Thrain_ and _Balin son of Fundin_ , the lack of surety disturbs him as before. There is no guarantee he will return from this journey, and thinking of returning at all is an unceasing weight. To return victorious, with Thorin as King of the Mountain and his nephews hale beside him, is one ending that would be a fine tale.

But the finest tales are the tragedies, and even successful Bilbo would forever know. Know, and prepare, and tell no-one of what he has seen. He is not entirely sure that acquiring the Ring in this state will not break him, will not lead to the ruination of a hobbit and the world in turn.

He must forgive. He must hope. He cannot, not when he is introducing himself to Molly with firm pets and apples and making much of her and all the while thinking of Bill, a brave pony just as sturdy and sure and soft-nosed.

"Your thoughts run deep, Bilbo my lad."

He runs his teeth along his pipe and takes her reins. "I prefer walking adventures. Riding seems so ... unnatural." He eyes Molly, munching in placid contentment.

Gandalf nods. "Ah, hobbits. Always your feet on the ground."

"If possible," Bilbo agrees, and mounts stiffly. He remembers the motions but it has been a very long time, and this soft creature he woke up in does not have saddle-sureness.

The wagers are settled, and Gandalf regales Bilbo with stories of his mother, who was, if the wizard is to be believed, six feet tall and flaming all over, a hobbit of fearsome spirit and excellent skill with the axe and quite bloodthirsty besides. Bilbo knows for a fact she was not quite four-foot-and-half and never flamed all over, though there was one occassion she set her hair on fire as a young hobbit in pursuit of a potential suitor across Farmer Maggot's fields.

The rest is not embellishment, and Bilbo sees Thorin listening and comparing to the stories, trying to find her in him, some inkling of worthiness.

He stares back.

Tookishness is not, and never has been, about what you look like.

"You believe I take after her, do you?" Bilbo asks, sun hot on his shoulders through his jacket, when he is sure that Thorin can catch what they say.

"Why, of course!" says Gandalf, and very jovial too. "You may be a Baggins, my boy, but Belladonna Took was not easily cowed. Why, she gave me quite a fright at times. My hair was once a fetching shade of brown, if you must know."

"It was not," Bilbo protests, forgetting himself and proper manners in the light and the comfort of being on Molly again, of the chance to set things aright. "You were born grey, Gandalf, you were born a silver-headed lad of no more than fifteen and no less, and your mother was quite tired of birthing business by the end."

Bilbo realises, with a freezing sort of comprehension, that he has only become more like his mother with age. That was a very Belladonna thing to say, much like her aspersions cast upon Sackville-Bagginses, and the queerness of Bungo's many gentlehobbit ways, and Bilbo's own refusal to answer to Bilba as a tween.

Gandalf chortles and Bilbo relaxes. "My dear Bilbo, I promise you, he did invent the game of golf."

"Whether he did or did not I daresay has no bearing on your claim he rode a full-sized horse. It was only named that by some very short fauntling cousin, I'll have you know."

"Bullroarer is an apt enough name besides," Gandalf said. "Come, it is too fine a day to waste on argument. Though I must say, you take more after your mother than I expected." The question hovers in Gandalf's gaze, in his waiting stillness. He knows from experience that Gandalf is all too good at waiting. 

Bilbo sighs, his exasperation not at all feigned. "You ask for a Took, Gandalf, and a Took you shall get, but I am still a Baggins and I hardly had time to put my affairs in order, and make sure my hole will be quite as I left it! I am quite cross with you, I shall have you know."

"Then I shall not disturb your sulk today. Tomorrow, perhaps."

He harrumphs and lets him trot off to ride beside Thorin.

The path they take settles into the sound of hooves and ponies and the crunch of packed dirt and disturbed birds, and he mourns the ease he once had with Gandalf. Quite by accident he has proven himself a friend to Gandalf once again, and the helplessness of it sticks in his craw. He did genuinely come to like Gandalf, and his memories remind him of the feeling all too easily.

If his reckoning is right, these few days will be slow, occupied with travelling and little attack as they pass under the Rangers' eyes, and so he settles himself with his bag of broadcloth and thread, tucking Molly's reins in quite firmly against his thigh, so that he will not be toppled, and continues his melancholy work.

Ori, as quite expected, rides the distance to put his pony beside his, the better to watch with the same tentative respect he'd offered along with his empty plate. It reminds Bilbo of newly-orphaned, newly-frightened Frodo, and that he did not know this child at all well the first time. Not well enough, clearly, and he thinks of diacrits and dwarvish bravery in the face of undwarvish despair. It all is difficult to see in the smooth, cowering face. "Excuse me, mister Baggins?"

"Come now, don't skulk," Bilbo says with a smile and nod to the waistcoat. He doesn't remember it being nearly that impressive in its complexity; in his mind it is rather dull, but in the sun it proves nothing of the sort. "I see you are a craftsman too."

"What? Oh. Oh! Yes." Ori smiles nervously. "A little. Thorin did the seams. A knack for seaming, he has."

"Does he?" Bilbo asks, genuinely interested. He saw little of that skill before, but he supposes someone did mend and patch clothes as they went, though he had rather assumed Bifur or Bofur or someone of the sort did it. Thorin must have been quite occupied on his nightwatches. "It was my grandmother who seamed best of all in my family. There is a shirt I have, passed from my great-uncle I believe, still in fine form after a hundred years, and I do believe her skill with thread is what did it."

Ori looks suitably impressed, and the others crowd into the conversation, questions of length and production and surreptiously fingering Ori's shoulders. The seams are, indeed, perfect, and they discuss the various kinds of craftsmanship, of forge and needle and wood and jewels, and he learns of the Firebrand jewellers, and Erebor's specialty, and the makings of such clothes and braids as they wear.

In return he tells of crochet and lace and filmy hair gathered and spun from goats, and produces a handkerchief to be passed around and fingered rather than allow his seams to be stroked.

"Ma hates mending," Kili says, examining the whiteworked monogram in one corner. "She'd do it, but she wasn't as good and there always was lots of other things to do so there'd be a pile by the door for uncle when he visited."

Gandalf turns to Thorin at that, all his angles curious, and the stiff, proud back unbends not a whit. "The task was welcome."

To handle cloth and tell stories to beloved sister-sons instead of striking poor steel and haggling with grimy merchants before the furnace of a forge? Bilbo imagines so. Thorin never said much himself about the time between being forced out of Erebor and this Company's formation, but Balin said enough for all of them, and Dwalin too, for Bilbo to gain an inkling of the wounded pride Thorin carries within.

Bombur indicates interest in crochet, and ten minutes later Bofur has a serviceable hook whittled from a twig, and Bifur has passed up some wool off a torn glove, and they are riding side by side, Bilbo's fingers loose around Bombur's as he explains.

Dwarves have a similar craft, but not to make holes, rather to show textures, almost woven in its making. Bofur's hat is shown as an example and the ensuing discussion and comparison to tattoos takes them until nightfall when Bombur has a serviceable doily the size of his palm -- perhaps a handkerchief, if one were very small, or a troll -- and looks very proud, as Bilbo tells him he should be.

"I could use another cap under this," Bofur suggests, tapping his hat. "If you'd be so disposed, Bombur."

Bombur looks even more pleased and quizzes Bilbo on the subject of making such a thing to fit a head, and that night Bofur's head is much examined and measured with the help of Ori's marked-off strip of linen before they are bid to sleep by Dwalin. 

It is almost like speaking to a horde of little hobbit fauntlings, fauntlings to teach and tell stories and laugh as they run after Gandalf hoping for wiz-poppers and Bilbo ... Bilbo has missed it. He doesn't think he can be friends, not with them as young as they are, and with his mind worked so thin and frayed, not with the memory of the Ring's ceaseless voice still lining his bones with a pool of cruelty deeper than all the world if he but drew upon it. But he can teach, and he can guide, and Bilbo -- Bilbo has always been quite good at such things, and that is what he shall do. 

By force if he must, as a Took would.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo butts heads with a certain dwarven king-to-be.

"Are all hobbits like you?" Kili asks the next day, peering down at his work while Fili rides at his other side and hides his curiosity with little success. Bilbo is planning for the shroud to take no more than six months, perhaps seven, and as they have yet a year's travel if he reckons right, there is no rush. But that is not an excuse to allow the habit of doing a little each day to lapse.

"Absolutely not," Bilbo says firmly. "Why, some of us are even set in our ways. Most are, in the Shire. You see, a Shire hobbit takes great joy in their armchair and books and a nice pipe-weed, and never ventures out-of-doors to where things will not be warm and dry and clean. Brandybucks are a different tale, but Baggins are as solid as they come, and that is who I am. A Baggins of Bag End with a very comfortable armchair."

"I do think our hobbit has more to offer than we know," Gandalf says from behind him. Suspicious old coot. Bilbo really is quite fond of him, but that is not a point he will conceed before he must.

"We are a jolly sort, hobbits. We go about our business and do not bother anyone."

"But you're not," Fili says. "Jolly, I mean."

Bilbo gives him a hard, prim sort of look. "Well, no. I am not used to riding, and this saddle is very uncomfortable! I do not feel very cheerful. Hobbits do not ride, you know. We use our feet."

"You'll get used to it. Here, like this." Kili adjusts his grip for him with the rough kindness of the young.

In truth, Bilbo does not mind riding nearly as much as he pretends. It is a joy to breathe and laugh and feel as though he can run and dance and perform all sorts of youthful excesses that seemed so tedious the first time around. More fool he, not knowing what a gift he had. Fool of a Took, he thinks fondly of himself, and feels himself breathe clean and deep. Fool.

"Hobbits do not do a great many things," says Gandalf. "Scolding wizards among them."

"Tooks do many things which Bagginses do not," he retorts. "Oin, may I have my handkerchief back?"

Oin blinks. "Oh, er ..."

"What did you do with it?" Bilbo demands, hating the stridency in his own voice and not quite caring. This was not meant to happen this time! He was not meant to run out of handkerchiefs, this was absolutely ridiculous.

Gandalf clears his throat. "Now, Tooks, they do not care for pottery or doilies or handkerchiefs. I know you are inclined to care for your comforts, however --"

"No, no, I -- you have absolutely no idea, Gandalf, none at all," and with a queer little twist in his chest he realises it is probably very true, Gandalf is very old and very wise and most likely strange enough not to know this of himself, but Bilbo has nonetheless had enough of chiding. "I have no family, only some cousins. I will not have you say it is a flaw to concern myself with all I have left of my relatives to keep me company, thankyouverymuch."

There is an odd silence over the Company now, and the handkerchief is quickly produced from Gloin's pocket and shaken of dirt, passed down the line of ponies with an embarrassed air.

"Thank you," Bilbo announces to the world at large, and tucks the square firmly into his pocket, his fingers momentarily brushing for a ring that is not yet there.

His mind keens, his hand curling in his waistcoat. The lack of the ring sings and sings and sings, growing loud, louder than bells or the Gaffer's bellow, hissing and writhing, and he feels himself not quite reach for Gandalf's throat, but rather clutch at his saddle with aching-tense knuckles.

Bilbo drags himself out of panic with a good long spate of considering which stitch goes where in which order if he is to be most efficient with his precious supplies of silk thread, the sturdy cloth reassuring and almost, if he bundles enough of it in his hand over the saddle, like a ring if he pretends very deeply with eyes shut that it is so.

"We're sorry," one of the children ventures once Bilbo lets out a low sigh, though he is so distracted he cannot quite tell which.

"I wiped my feet on -- a glorybox, you said?" questioning from Kili, and for a moment Bilbo wonders just how differently dwarves did things; he spent so much time buried in the lore of Elves at Rivendell that to think instead of dwarvish custom feels very odd. For so long thinking of what might have been had he been a little braver, a little faster, a little better a friend, only brought pain.

Now it brings both pain and determination, and it eases him enough to straighten and wave off the offense. "No harm done. You did clean up quite excellently after yourselves, after all!"

He feels them trade looks over his head at that. Good boys the pair of them, as fast friends as Frodo and Samwise Gamgee, and as sweetly natured. And as incorrigible, though given what these boys get up to and go through, a streak of wildness is by no means the worst thing.

At least they don't have their uncle's pride, or a Baggins' tendency to be cowed by the gossip of other folk.

Bilbo finds himself entertaining whether it would be wisest to have Thorin die and let the pair of them rule. While Durin's ring would pass down to the heir, Fili, it would only pass down to the one, and a pair ruling together would keep better ties to friends and family and perhaps avert a large string of mistakes. It would be easiest to let him be beheaded by Azog's orc, of course.

He catches himself and pushes away the Ring's voice of cool collected _waiting_ power with a slip of his needle beneath the first few layers of skin on his fingertip. No, he certainly will not have Durin's ring upon one and Sauron's upon the other brother, to rule together in great and terrible power flowing with gold and drowning corpses with stars of mithril in their eyes. 

Certainly not. It will not happen because he will not allow Thorin to die for the sake of convenience and that is that, no matter what happens or what the Ring's memory says. Bilbo will have his Ring one way or another and if it tries to slip away and pass to someone more useful, he will simply have to fist his hand, as he grew used to so doing in the last few years of his possession, and keep it firmly buttoned in his pocket otherwise.

That is that.

Bilbo fears he is quite mad. Bilbo fears so many things that to think of any of them is exhausting and sets his hands to shaking, and he has a shroud to make and it will not do at all to gift sloppy work, not at all. So he calms himself with the countertenor of Elvish song-solos, humming to himself the sagas of Gil-galad, and misses Lord Elrond's wistful halls full of wisdom and merrymaking with a fierce ache.

"What song is that?" Kili asks. "It doesn't sound hobbity."

"You haven't heard halfling-songs," Fili argues. "It's not as if you know, is it?"

"You give it a listen, then, and tell me it doesn't sound like a treeshagger sort of tune!"

Bilbo finds himself snarling. "That is _quite enough_! Not all Elf-Kings are fair and wise, but my books count Lord Elrond of Rivendell as a dear friend to all peoples of Middle-Earth, and the Lady of Lorien too, and I will not have you say such things!"

Thorin wheels about on his pony. "They are traitors! Betrayers. They send no aid, give no help to allies, they care not for the troubles of others --"

Oh, where has Bilbo heard that before? "You sound exactly like an Elf just now, I'll have you know."

"It would credit you," Thorin said, hissing between his teeth, "to remember I lead this Company, and it is only your contract that stops me from striking you down where you stand as an enemy spy."

"It would credit _you_ to remember I am here because Gandalf pled on your behalf."

He didn't quite say that Thorin and the company need him far more than he needs them, but he rather thinks it is sufficiently implied.

Thorin's teeth are bared, eyes dark as the obsidian of dragon-claws. "I am not responsible for you."

"Oh, naturally," Bilbo says, shifting to a more Shire-like coaxing innocence and quietly wishing he could give himself a hearty slap for the charade. But of course the pretense will only continue on, and on, and on, and he flicks the needle under his skin to remind himself of what it was he was going to say to begin with. "Of course anyone should help a friend if they can. I'm not disputing that at all! Or that Elves can be a most difficult lot! It certainly seems they can be, in all the tales. Only it seems rather unfair to strike all Elves with the same blow when you have merely to listen to know they do not all get along at all on, well, any subject really."

"You know nothing," says Thorin, turning his pony around to the front of the line.

"Best not keep at it, Mister Baggins," Bofur murmurs. "You've upset him enough." There is no more friendliness to be found in his face today.

Gandalf is giving him the most piercing stare but it is nothing compared to Fili and Kili, who are giving him half-horrified, half-admiring glances between stifled chortles. "You argued with uncle," Kili whispers.

"And nearly forced a draw! I don't think that's happened in decades." Fili strokes a braid. "I rather like you along, halfling, but I don't like my uncle bothered."

Fili's loyalty, he trusts. Kili's, too, and for this he gives a nod and half-bow of contrition. "Well, I suppose I am used to running my own affairs in Bag End. We hobbits do not like being told what to do, you know. This is all very different."

"Don't you have kings in the Shire?"

"Oh, no, only a Thain, and they are rather -- well, they are there to settle disputes, like if someone has milked a goat they oughtn't, or stole something, or failed to return a borrowed spoon. Otherwise they're quite ordinary folk, going about their comforts same as the rest of us. I shall keep such things to myself from now on, I assure you."

"Oh, no, don't do that!" Kili cries, then bites his lip and bends to whisper. "But perhaps a little quieter?"

"Not to his face?" Fili suggests. "If you're sure you're not an Elvish spy."

"That I could manage, I think," Bilbo says, quietly dry. "Would an Elf allow me to go without shoes?" He flexes his toes in illustration, curls brushing pleasantly against Molly's side.

Fili laughs at that. "It is, well, what you said before that, Master Baggins, about families and such. I think that is how you escaped some of his wrath. But I don't think it shall work again. My uncle has a history with elves, you might have gathered. Reminding him of it is not wise." A fair warning indeed from someone not at all supposed to give any fairness to, well, a glory-hunter, or someone showing themselves bound by contract and not principles, and Bilbo takes it as it is meant with many thanks and bashful understanding.

"I promise I will only say treeshagger once a day," says Kili after a great deal of brow-furrowing, and blushes at his mistake. "I shall begin tomorrow!"

"Quite all right, lad. I'll hold you to it," Bilbo says, feeling almost, almost fond in a wretched quiet way he thought long asleep after he bid Frodo off on an impossible quest.

Fili folds his fingers about Minty's reins. "But while we are speaking of Thains, only small disputes? No war, no ... battles, no great arguments?"

Bilbo thinks of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. "Not never, but very rarely. It is not often someone disposed to argue with a hobbit is also disposed to spend a lot of time bothering to argue, you see."

He grins, braids slapping against his shoulders when he turns his head. "Sounds familiar, doesn't it, Kili?"

Kili grins back. "So it does."

"I have no idea what you two are on about," says Bilbo, drawing on all the repressiveness of offended Bagginses. "I am sure I don't wish to."

He leaves them to their giggles and rides up to Bombur, who startles at his approach and glances nervously between him and Thorin.

Bilbo rescues him from the dilemma and speaks first. "I just wish to see how well you are doing."

"Oh, very," Bombur says enthusiastically, and sobers into a mutter. "I feel I am. Will you look?"

Bilbo examines it. "Oh, very well indeed! Look at how neat you are. It shall be a fine cap, Master Bombur, a fine one indeed."

Bombur's nod when he accepts it back is uncertain, and it takes only a glance at Dwalin's glower to see the reason. "My thanks."

"Very welcome!" He drops back, choosing to be tactful for the moment and say nothing to anybody, and grits his teeth when Gandalf slows his horse to ride beside him.

"Tooks," says Gandalf, half-smiling.

"Wizards," says Bilbo, offering a sort of unfriendly camaderie in return, and they talk no further of the matter, or indeed any other, for the rest of the day.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Balin is the sharpest dwarf in all the Company.

Three days it takes of silence and Bilbo calling to them to lift a pair of deer he crept upon and slaughtered in swiftness after a mutter of hunting to preserve their travelling food before Thorin unbends even a little in his disdain.

Not that he forgives or forgets -- no, it is quite plain he does neither even as he works with Bilbo to strip the skin, even as Bilbo strokes one of the tender deer-eyes with something like fascinated familiarity, the slip and wideness of it calling deep to a creature of amoral indiscriminate appetite.

"Enough of that," he mutters. "Take this," pushing a handful of guts, and Bilbo clings and rests his weight on the deer's ribs as its legs are exposed pink and white, the tops of its hooves an incongruous brown. "We make for the hill before scavengers come," Thorin calls. "We shall feast this night."

Bofur claps Bilbo's shoulder. "We can do something with this, right enough. You can, can't you, Bomfur?"

Bomfur belches agreeably and hauls one of the carcasses onto his shoulders.

Bilbo glances about as they dismount, pulling the last bundle of twigs off Molly's poor withers and handing it to an intently focused Fili who passes it on around the fire, too busy listening to Dwalin quiz him on the proper treatment of vension as they blow on steaming pieces speared on the tiny knives they all have belted at their waists.

The hill is more of a crag, a high crag as crags go, but still a nook of discomfort and a tiny fire that sputters as Bifur brushes ash over simmering sputtering parcels buried in the embers.

Was it this night or another that Balin told the story of Thorin's sorrows?

A howl sounds, familiar and distinct, and Bilbo sighs and pulls out the broadcloth as Molly finishes her apple and sits by the fire, squinting to thread his needle by its light; he thought he had it secured so he wouldn't have to, but the knot's come quite undone, blast it.

He plays his role, bending over the crumple in his lap and glancing around in the very picture, if he says so himself, of nervousness. "What was that?"

"Orcs," Kili says, glee badly hidden, and Bilbo sees Fili sigh into his fist as Thorin straightens from his lean against the rock in the corner of Bilbo's eye.

"Mm," says Bilbo. Dratted firelight wasn't quite good enough to see, and he relied on the feel of his fingers, the tiny sliver forge-cut into the steel.

With great relish from the pair of them: "Throat cutters. There's _dozens_ of them out there. The lowlands are crawling with them."

"Mmm," says Bilbo, quite calm now that his needle is threaded.

"Quick and quiet, no screams, just lots of blood."

"Mm," says Bilbo.

They look at each other as if to giggle, smug in their shared knowledge, and falter. Thorin rises but the brothers aren't paying him any attention.

"Aren't you worried?" Fili asks, Kili's brows drawing together in matching puzzlement.

"Are you quite finished trying to frighten me?" Bilbo returns. "It's a poor joke, you know."

"You think it funny, do you?" Thorin says, low behind him, and for a moment Bilbo freezes, but he is speaking to his nephews, as strongly condemnatory as Bilbo has ever heard it. Well, apart from that time in Erebor and the Arkenstone business, but Bilbo suspects that was a special case.

"We didn't mean anything by it, it was just --"

Bilbo gives them his most severe frown and interrupts. "That is why you should not speak of it. We had Wolves and Orcs in the Shire, once, some time ago. There are still people who cannot stand mention of them, and shake when they think of it. I lost my mother in the Fell Winter. You should know better than to warn of monsters unneeded."

"You know nothing of the world," Thorin echoes, but Bilbo feels the thoughtful stare while Fili and Kili's faces twist with guilt.

Balin launches into the tale of greed and despair while Thorin stands at the edge. This he remembers, but he most certainly does not remember Thorin giving him stares that itch his shoulders most dreadfully.

"What happened to the Pale Orc?" he asks, because at this point he actually doesn't remember if they think Azog is dead; all he remembers is that Thorin has a rather impressive vendetta and would have rushed to kill him regardless, the silly lad. He wishes he hadn't spent quite so much time doing his best to forget everything about his adventure.

Writing it out the first time jogged enough of it that so far his predictions were reasonably accurate, but he knew he hadn't written down everything important or failed to fabricate some events in one chapter or another, for he did agree with Gandalf on the flair needed to carry a good tale. The Ring's voice telling him of the bright star caught on Gandalf's finger, or the black-and-red flash on Thorin's middle finger, recoiling from one and drawing to the other, isn't helping him organise his thoughts at all. It's as though a bearer of the One, former or not, can see all the rest somehow, and he does hope that Gandalf can't see the marks Sauron's ring left on his mind, though he'd done well enough on seeing him at his eleventy-first birthday party. But that was then, and this is the past again.

If Gandalf cannot, Galadriel perhaps could.

Oh, dear.

Oh dear oh dear.

"Thrown to the depths he came from," Thorin says, stalking past Bilbo in high dudgeon.

Had he really lived that long? Goodness, the ring was a wretched thing. Wretched, wretched, and he wants it so badly he can taste the dirt and scrub-moss of its resting-place with Gollum. It feels as though he could find it again if he only digs deep enough, wears his fingers to the knuckles and flays all the flesh off his arms and it would be worth it, more than worth it, a simple and poor price to have it to hold again. Reminding himself to patience is a great struggle. It will come to him. It will come. His ring. His precious. His own.

 _Aule_ , he appalls himself at times. Old Took be merciful, this is a dangerous path to take.

"Mm," Bilbo says, finding it quite a safe sound to make, not at all betraying the direction of his thoughts, or the quick stab of his needle under his fingernail. Pain is all that settles the voice enough for him to hear his own, he learned a long time ago: pain and suffering in submission to its power. Even its echo follows those terrible rules. "Orcs are hardy folk."

Thorin snarls. "He died of his wounds, the filth. Long ago."

Bilbo catches the glance shared between Gandalf and Balin. Do they both know, or suspect, that Azog is not quite as dead as Thorin believes?

Meddlers, all of them, and Bilbo is the worst of all.

He struggles not to curse aloud. Khudzul is a very good language for cursing, but doing it now would only cause no end of problems.

The Lady of Lorien, as far as he recalls, has never been said not to be merciful. He clings to that hope, shaky as a new leaf though it is, and cleans the needle on his shirt and goes back to his work.

Balin approaches him when the others have all gone to sleep, and Thorin is brooding on the ledge once more, kneeling down with a brush of his knees to whisk away dirt. Bilbo remembers how much he liked Balin.

He nods at the shroud in Bilbo's lap, beard brushing his belt, and but for the fork in the end it would catch. Bilbo sees Balin weighing his words, balanced on a scale of loyalty to the son of his heart against compassion, and lets him finger a hem, bending very close to peer at his work with an eyeglass. The sound he makes is soft and pleased, and Bilbo -- Bilbo thirsts for that approval, feels himself take it in, Balin's admiration seeping into his roots like water on roof-grass after a long summer. "Fit for a king, lad." His fingers pause on a rune, half-finished but clear in its outlines.

This square is the first part of the Khudzul rune-pictures for mourning a companion, an oath-friend, someone loyal and brave and very much mourned. Balin's colour fades to the sheen of Bilbo's finest, palest thread.

He hastens to explain, fidgeting. "I saw them in a book and copied it down when I decided to come with you, I suppose. I thought -- well -- I thought -- mm, well. In case, if. Erm."

"Fit for a king," Balin repeats, and settles on his haunches. Not quite relaxed, but listening. "Who is it for?"

"I don't know," Bilbo answers, quite truthful.

Bilbo is fiercely, fiercely glad not to know. It tells him he might succeed. It also tells him he might fail.

Somehow not knowing is the saddest he's ever been.

"I really don't know. Don't -- don't tell the others," he mutters. "I know it's foolish, only -- I think -- well, you are all so brave, and reckless really, at least it seems to me, but I am a hobbit after all. But if it should happen that, well, it is needed, I would rather it was proper. You know. Fitting. For any of you. Not that I hope it does! Erm."

Balin fingers the hem again, as neat as Bilbo could make it while relearning how to ride a pony with all the various aches and pains learning brings. "Halflings are odd creatures," he says. "Very odd and very kind."

He has the impulse to tell Balin all about Elvish mourning-songs, how the very best and awful are half a duet and all the sorrow in the empty harmonies where another voice should be, and about Shire grief, how the holes of their dead are slowly planted over with the flower or bush of their hobbit, blooming each spring in memory and carefully tended, tenderly loved.

In the end he says this, quiet and careful with embarrassment: "For the others it might suit. But I am not sure it is good enough for you, you see. I do not know you very well, of course, but from what I know, I am sure I am not wrong in saying so."

Balin looks outright touched, and he pats the back of Bilbo's hand, clearing his throat and getting to his feet with a gruff shuffle of his boots. "Very kind," he says again. "It will do me well. Very well."

"I know I am a great deal of bother, but I don't want any of you to die. Certainly not on my account. Never on my account," Bilbo promises. "I would rather this was never needed. It only calms my hands, that is all."

"Aye, I understand, though the others might not." He has to bend to pat Bilbo's shoulder, but he appreciates the gesture very much. "Well, halfling, let us see about that. I'll keep your secret for now."


End file.
